Most often, we associate this word “order” with shopping—online shopping, to be exact. To computer programmer, Pierre Omidyar, it never crossed his mind that eBay would become one of the biggest online shopping venues today. Initially named AuctionWeb, it was first meant to be a venue where people could list items for auction. It then grew into the biggest internet retail site where buyers could place an order for a specific product in its listings and give feedback to its respective sellers as well. Due to eBay’s exponential growth, it made the French-born Iranian-American programmer as one the pioneers of online shopping and the most prominent internet tycoon to date. You don’t need to be a computer programmer to upscale your business, nor have the genius of one as well. All it takes is just one form for customers and clients to place their orders and allows your products and services to reach places far and wide, as well.
What Is an Order?
The word order itself means a lot of things for most people. It could mean buying a product showcased in your favorite home shopping channel, or, calling your trusted plumber to repair leaks or unclog your drain pipes on the other end. But for an enterprising individual like you, an order may be synonymous with profit. Orders are like a customer’s request for something they wish or desire, and are then received by businesses using a sheet of paper. That sheet of paper is called an order form. These forms can be filled out in-store, sent through the mail, or even embedded in your business’s website, extending your business’s reach even further.
Types of Orders
Orders are placed and taken verbally over the counter, in most cases. One such example is when you fall in line, along with other customers to order a happy meal at McDonald’s. But on a grander scale, orders are placed and received using order forms. Businesses do this to formally acknowledge a customer’s request for an item or a service, and also to document such a transaction in their books. Although orders are commonly associated with anything tangible such as food, clothing, and luxury items, they are also used by the service sector as well—or a mix of both, in some cases. Listed below are the types of orders for every type of business.
- Purchase Order: Purchase orders are the most common types of orders that we encounter daily. We commonly associate this with ordering a pizza over the phone whenever you’re too lazy to get out from the warmth and coziness of our couch, or perhaps, buying yourself a custom made man-purse from an online hipster. However, purchase orders are also commonly employed by businesses, especially when restocking or expanding their inventories, aside from domestic applications.
- Mail Order: Remember that small piece of card embedded in between the pages of your monthly reader’s digest? That card is where you place an order for a subscription, which you send back to the magazine’s publisher via mail. This process is what you call a mail order. Mail orders aren’t only applied in ordering published materials from publishers but also by retailers who wish to extend their products’ reach to a broader market. Mail orders were very common in the olden days, especially in frontier towns, where there are not much goods to go around or very hard to come by. It is said that the Pony Express delivered mail orders to these isolated parts and carried them back to their respective senders during its peak in 1860 to 1861.
- Job Order: There are times when you need to send one of your men to mow your client’s lawn or clean his pool. This is called a job order. Job orders are particularly specific to businesses in the service sector and the independent contractors. On the other hand, job orders are commonly used by busy individuals or by anyone who doesn’t have any time to spare for doing such a menial task. Job orders are received using a job order form and are finalized with a job order agreement by both the client and the independent contractor.
- Change Order: Change orders are done when changes are to made in a contract or agreement. This type of order is specific to contracts between a client and independent contractors. Change orders allow clients and service providers to change or modify certain terms and conditions, scope and limitations, and even payment modes and terms specified in the contract agreement.
Mail Order Brides: A Short History of Love from Afar
After the American war of independence, the newly found country decided to extend its boundaries west to prevent other European powers from laying claim to it, and from exploiting its resources for commercial use. The move was initially started with the Lewis and Clark expedition, which opened a new frontier for Americans to settle and start life anew. It was then followed by the likes of legendary frontiersmen, like Daniel Boone and Hugh Glass, to set out and brave the wilderness of the American Frontier in search of fortune.
As the western boundaries later expanded and new states formed within its vicinity between the 17th and 18th centuries, so are the number of young men braving the inherent dangers of the frontier. The frontier then soon became filled with largely disproportionate communities, with males forming a majority of the populace, with “comfort women,” making up the rest. Due to the shortage of women of good standing and reputation, men in the frontier began to write back home requesting their families to find them a suitable bride, which made the trend of courtship by correspondence popular in the frontier.
The late 20th century saw the mail order bride industry’s rose in popularity among American men as they find most American women of that time unsuitable as wives and homemakers. Mail order bride companies and dating agencies offers a catalog of foriegn women as brides, which the women themselves happily enlist themselves as they don’t find men in their countries suitable as husbands as well. The industry, however, fell out of popularity with the rise of dating sites such as Tinder, more recently.
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How to Incorporate an Order Form
Incorporating an order form into your business enables it to reach greater heights and a wider market. Whether you’re into the retail and wholesale, or, trade and service sector, an order form allows you to have a glimpse of what a customer really want from your business and also record the transaction in your books and files. Incorporating an order form also makes sense even if you’re planning to place your business in the digital domain, as well.
Step 1. Choose an Order Form Template
Choose an order form template from a wide array of templates available in this article. These templates can either be used as a reference in making your business’s own order form. If you wish to make your life easy and convenient, you can also opt to download these templates as they are highly customizable. Then, click the download button after choosing a template that fits your taste and preference.
Step 2. Place your Logo and Business Name
Then, begin editing the template that you previously downloaded from this article by placing your business’s logo and name. The template that you’ve downloaded may already have a business name and logo on its face. However, that doesn’t present much of a problem and can be easily remedied. And to do that, simply highlight the area where the prewritten name and logo is located. Then, press the backspace button and replace it with your very own business name and logo.
Step 3. Include a Terms of Service and Use
Next, include terms of service and use in your order form. Including such in your order form allows a customer to know their rights and limitations and the conditions by which a refund may apply if such an occasion will arise. This where you’d also state the period of a product’s warranty and until when it’s applicable. After that, place two checkboxes with an affirmative and a negative clause written beside each of them.
Step 4. Place a Signature Block
After completing the previous steps, place a signature block at the bottom of the terms of service and use. The signature block is where you and your customer writes both your signatures. It indicates that the customer agrees to the terms of service and use, and to finalize the transaction.
Step 5. Print or Incorporate the Order Form on your Website
Lastly, print or embed your order form on your website after you’re done making your order form. To incorporate an order form on your website, you can either hire the services of an IT professional or have it done for free by using Google Forms. Google Forms is a free platform used by businesses; for customers to place their orders, gather feedback, and conduct polls and surveys. However, if you choose to print your order form, it’s best to hire the services of a commercial printer to have them printed in bulk.
Terminologies
Order – Order, in commerce, is an act or activity of requesting the purchase of a product or availing for a service offered by a business. Orders are placed in an order form so that these transactions will be aptly recorded and finalized.
Service – Service is a transaction in which no tangible goods are involved. The goods involved in these transactions are those associated with trade and profession such as legal advice, cleaning, home repair, etc.
Retail – Retail is the sale of goods individually or by set. This transaction is where goods or products are sold directly to their end-users.
Wholesale – Wholesale is the sale of goods by bulk. This transaction is where goods and products are sold to distributors or intermediaries. Unlike retailing, purchase by bulk can also be made by consumers or end-users as well.
FAQs
1. Can I incorporate an Order Form to my Facebook Store?
Yes! You can incorporate an order form on your Facebook store or on any online platform that your business use. Order forms are widely used by online retail and shopping sites such as eBay, Amazon, Lazada. You can also find crude order forms used by small-time sellers on social media, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t make a well-defined order form for your social media store. You may not notice it, but there are websites online that have a well-defined order form that their customers can use with ease. You may think that it entails hiring an IT professional and its expensive service; however, you can skip or ditch that idea as you can always use Google Forms for that matter.
2. Can my Online Store Benefit from using an Order Form?
Absolutely! As you can see, people nowadays shop or order online and pay using the same channel. The main reason is that everyone can access the world wide web anytime, anywhere, using any devices people have on their hands. And, it’s very undeniable that the internet gave us the degree of convenience that previous channels can’t provide, like making and completing transactions in real-time. That is why using an order form for your online store is beneficial as it allows it to have a wider reach. Plus, your order forms can also be linked to your accounting software and a point of sale apps.
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